News, Analysis, Trends, Management Innovations for
Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups

Hosted by Robert Michel

News, Analysis, Trends, Management Innovations for
Clinical Laboratories and Pathology Groups

Hosted by Robert Michel
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Interoperability and Meaningful Use Attestation Continues to Increase as the Top 10 EHR Systems of 2015 Vie for Market Dominance

Pathologists and clinical lab managers will not be surprised to learn that Epic leads the competitive electronic health record system market, as ranked by SK&A

No one will be surprised that, in one company’s rankings of the top electronic health record (EHR) systems for 2015, the number one position is held by Epic Systems Corporation. More broadly, about half the market share of EHR systems is concentrated among just five EHR vendors.

Overall Ranking of Top 10 EHR Vendors in 2015

The report from SK&A outlines the top 10 EHR vendors by overall market share during 2015 as follows:

EHR Vendor and Market Share %

1) Epic Systems Corporation  11.6%
2) eClinicalWorks   10.2%
3) Allscripts   8.7%
4) Practice Fusion   6.7%
5) NextGen Healthcare  5.5%
6) General Electric Healthcare IT  3.6%
7) Cerner Corporation   3.5%
8) Athenahealth, Inc.   3.3%
9) McKesson Provider Technologies  3.2%
10) Amazing Charts Inc.   2.3% (more…)

Federal Government Report on EHR Interoperability Pinpoints Barriers to Information Exchange; Questions Value of Meaningful Use Requirements

Some health IT experts criticize the Government Accountability Office report for ‘incomplete research’ and failure to focus on ‘person-centered interoperability’

Several years after paying billions of incentive dollars to thousands of hospitals and physicians to encourage adoption of electronic health records (EHRs), federal officials remain frustrated at the lack of interoperability among the competing EHR systems. This is a problem recognized by clinical laboratories that must create and maintain interfaces between their laboratory information systems (LISs) and the EHRs of their client physicians.

Frustration over this situation motivated Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee chairman, along with four other U.S. Senate Committee Chairman, to request that the General Accountability Office (GAO) study the problem and report its findings. The GAO released its report last September in a publication: “Nonfederal Efforts to Help Achieve Health Information Interoperability.”

The GAO’s investigators outlined five barriers to EHR interoperability. They also suggested that meaningful use (MU) requirements present a roadblock to information sharing. (more…)

Because It Remains Tough to Achieve Interoperability among EHRs, Congress is Proposing Legislation to Resolve That Issue in Ways That May Help Medical Laboratories

One new federal law forbids health IT vendors and providers from deliberately blocking information-sharing with competing EHR systems

Several years deep into its effort to get physicians and hospitals to use electronic health record (EHR) systems, the federal government has yet to come up with a way to improve interoperability—the ability of EHRs to interface and communicate with other systems.

Stage one and stage two Meaningful Use guidelines have failed to successfully address the barriers preventing interoperability. Of course, clinical laboratories and pathology groups encounter this problem daily. That’s because they must build interfaces between their laboratory information systems (LIS) and the EHRs of their client physicians. The cost of creating workable LIS-to-EHR interfaces continues to be a huge burden on medical laboratories and that is why they support improved interoperability. But labs also contribute to the lack of interoperability when they enact restrictions on how lab test data can be shared with other providers and competing labs who are serving the same physicians and patients. (more…)

How Medical Laboratories Help Physicians Overcome the Failure of Many EHR Systems to Support Effective Lab Test Ordering and Lab Result Reporting

Innovative clinical laboratories are not only rethinking traditional LIS-to-EHR interfaces with their client physicians, but they are also helping to streamline physicians’ workflow

Most clinical laboratories and anatomic pathology groups would welcome a fast (“easy-on”), cheap, and effective method that enables electronic lab test ordering and lab test reporting between physician’s offices and medical laboratories.

The goal is to create the seamless interface between the electronic health record (EHR) systems of office-based physicians and the laboratory information systems (LIS) of clinical laboratories. Labs want a way to electronically receive lab test orders from physicians in a format that is easily digested by the lab’s LIS, and perhaps their hospital’s information system (HIS), and which also allows the lab to match the orders accurately and seamlessly with specimens as they arrive.

Next, the clinical lab needs an equally seamless way to electronically transmit the medical laboratory test results back to physicians so that this lab test data automatically and accurately populates the physicians’ EHRs. (more…)

Top 10 Rankings of EHR Market Share Put Epic First as Hospitals, Physicians, and Clinical Laboratories Make Progress on Interoperability

In both the hospital market and the ambulatory market, Epic has the best-selling electronic health records system, according to data issued by ONCHIT

Across the nation, clinical laboratories and pathology groups are busy interfacing their laboratory information (LIS) systems to the electronic health record (EHR) systems of their client hospitals and physicians. Yet, few lab managers know which EHR systems are dominating the market and which EHR systems are barely surviving.

In fact, it can be a challenge to understand market share by vendor. That is because market share can be determined in multiple ways. Dark Daily found three different rankings of EHR vendors. Each was based on slightly different sets of data. (more…)

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